The Texas border

Evaluating the effectiveness of spending millions on security should be enlightening.

Copyright 2013: Houston Chronicle

December 11, 2015

Photo: Callie Richmond

Department of Public Safety troopers have other important jobs to do, but their border duties have kept them stretched thin around the state.

Department of Public Safety troopers have other important jobs to...

In a welcome development, Texas House Speaker Joe Straus charged the House Appropriations Committee last month with studying the effectiveness of an $800 million border "surge" the state Legislature approved this year, ostensibly to make the Texas-Mexico border safer.

The surge, part of "Operation Strong Safety" started under then-Gov. Rick Perry, took 500 Department of Public Safety troopers from their normal duties around the state and rotated them into counties along the Rio Grande to bolster supposedly weak federal efforts to stop undocumented immigration.

Reservists from the Texas National Guard also were sent to the border, where they, like the DPS troopers, did not have a clearly defined role, except perhaps to further the political aims of state leaders.

So far, no one has been able to give good answers about what their expensive presence has accomplished. The DPS issued reports about its work, but critics charged that they included drug seizures and undocumented immigrant arrests by federal agents to inflate its accomplishments.

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The powerful Texas Legislative Budget Board, which includes Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and Straus, said the state had no definition for border security, so it could not measure their usefulness - a pretty good indication of the nebulous mission these people were sent on.

The problem is that from the beginning Operation Strong Safety has been more about political gain than border safety.

Last year, there was a surge in Central American children arriving at the Rio Grande because they sought to escape violence and poverty and erroneously thought the U.S. would welcome them with open arms. That has continued less dramatically this year, but long-term both undocumented immigration and border crime have been declining.

The Border Patrol has 3,000 agents in the counties where the state has deployed its people. Locals complain that DPS troopers are basically just lining their highways and handing out traffic tickets.

But the state's leaders, all Republicans, have found that whipping up fears about the border, unfounded or not, and criticizing the federal government's work there are good politics.

We can only hope that Speaker Straus is finally trying to inject some good sense into the situation with his charge that the Appropriations Committee "evaluate the effectiveness" of the DPS' border work and develop a way to actually measure "border security" for future budget decisions.

We applaud him and urge the bi-partisan committee to put politics aside, develop a thorough, objective report and put the people's true interests first, not those of politicians seeking to further their careers.

Stirring up public fear, then spending hundreds of millions of state dollars to assuage it is about as low as it gets. But in present-day Texas, it seems that low has become the political norm.